Waiting at the border.

i woke up at noon as the train stopped at the russia-mongolia border. it said in the guidebook that we would be there somewhere between five and 11 hours! it was hot and bright outside. all the british and australian tourists offered more condolences regarding my missing electronic equipment, but i'd already put it behind me as i anticipated ordering a new camera from amazon and having my mom bring it with her when she flies out to join our cavalcade of fun next week in beijing.

five to eleven hours? for passport checks? wtf? well, it was true. i didn't know where we were, except that it was a long railyard with freight cars of various types along all the other tracks except for where our two carriages set on the rails nearest the station. apparently the rest of the train had detached from us at some point, leaving just these two carriages (and no locomotive) to wilt in the summer siberian heat.

nothing much exciting happened. annette was on her fifth day of stomach problems, so she shuttled back and forth to the bathroom in the station until the lady in there ( you have to pay six or seven rubles to use the urine-smelling facilities in russian train stations) was on a first-name basis with her. amanda and i wandered around, over to where there was a little makeshift market in a series of tin sheds out behind the station. they were selling quartered pigs (as in legs with hoofs still attached) and bootleg phoenix suns uniforms and - thankfully - water and ramen and fruit and stuff.

noon became five after hours of conversation about midgets, and birth defects, and why do i like star wars so much, and stuff like that - the things you talk about when you've been waiting all day in a hot, dusty russian train station and the customs officials have not yet made an appearance.

but then, shortly after five, we were all herded back into our sweltering compartments onboard the train, because it was time for the russian customs and immigration people to do there thing. i wanted to ask them what the hell they'd been doing the past five hours, but they were stern and scary, so i kept my mouth shut.

we finally rolled out of the town at half past seven. i filmed the sunset out the window, but the carriage attendant came running at me and seemed to indicate that i shouldn't be filming in this sensitive border area of rolling green hills and stagnant ponds. i put my camera away and noticed that there were electric and barbed-wire fences running alongside the track, so it was an area of some strategic importance, apparently.

half an hour down the line, the mongolian customs and immigration people came on board and did their thing within half an hour, and then we were on our way, finally out of russia, and rolling onward through the night towards ulan baatar. we got here at six this morning, were met by the lady who runs the guesthouse at which we're staying, and we all took naps until the afternoon. tomorrow we're gonna head out of the city to soak in the natural beauty of mongolia.